Double G & T

The football season is here. Two non-league teams that are worth keeping an eye on during the campaign are big spenders South Shields and Billericay Town, who are both enjoying the bountiful munificent patronage of millionaire owners, in Geoff Thompson and Glenn Tamplin respectively. For the new issue of Stand, I considered the merits, drawbacks, pitfalls and opportunities these two clubs may face. Read my article here, then buy the fanzine -:

A mate of mine spent more than two decades as a print journalist, firstly as a football reporter and then as the sports editor of a local paper, before plummeting sales and the advent of the internet gave him the option of taking redundancy. Grown contemptuous of the beautiful game by exposure to endless wearying encounters with paranoid Press Officers, shifty chairmen, avaricious agents and thick players,  it was a no-brainer, especially as he’d already been sounded out by one of the universities in the area to teach the sport options on their journalism degree course. Personally, I’ve always had my suspicions about such courses, recalling William Burrough’s take on his role as a visiting professor of Creative Writing at the City College of New York, where he repeatedly urged the aspirant authors under his tutelage to abandon their dreams of published fame, as “there’s more than enough fucking books in this world already.”

So too with journalism it seems; while the influence and reach of mainstream print media declines by the week, it seems we may as well train people to be blacksmiths, fletchers  or dry stone wallers instead, such is the paucity of current opportunities in Grub Street. Frankly I’d be advising anyone who wants to be a writer to get themselves set up in a decent, well-paid job first of all, because looking to make your living from the quality of your prose is a pretty unrealistic aim in this day and age. While my mate sheepishly admits that those fresh faced and earnest undergrads in his care are spending the thick end of £30k in tuition fees to eventually work in call centres or bespoke chain burger joints while waiting for the phone to ring, his new career has allowed him to peel off the accumulated layers of cynicism towards almost all aspects of professional sport. Don’t get me wrong; he’d not be seen dead at St James’ Park or the Stadium of Light if he could help it, as instead he opts to spend his summer playing village cricket and his winter coaching his son’s junior side, not to mention watching their local non-league side. From his perspective, sport seems so much more pure at the grassroots level and in a lot of ways I tend to agree.

I started attending non-league football in the mid-90s because the demands of television scheduling, the price of away games and the interminable series of international breaks that destroyed the fixture list meant I was left with about 25 spare Saturdays a season. After a while, I was no longer amused or enchanted by the vaguaries and eccentricities of the amateur game, I was completely head over heels in love with it, actively preferring it to wasting my time and even more money at St James’ Park. Walking away from Newcastle United and embracing my beloved Newcastle Benfield of the Northern League First Division was the single most empowering sporting decision I’ve made in my life. The only regret I have is that I didn’t do it sooner, because I know for a fact that for the rest of my life, I will spend winter Saturday afternoons watching Northern League football, and summer Saturdays watching my equally beloved Tynemouth CC in the North East Cricket Premier League, but that’s a different story entirely.

The non-league scene in the north east is thriving, welcoming and inclusive; everyone knows everybody else. Of course that means if you sneeze at Whitley Bay versus Consett someone watching Dunston Fed against West Auckland will say “bless you,” but the community is a great one to be part of. If you’re at a loose end of a Tuesday evening and take in another team’s game, you’ll know most of the crowd and spend the first half catching up briefly with pals from different clubs, comparing notes about players, teams and officials, as well as important stuff like the quality of the tea hut or beer in the clubhouse. Don’t get me wrong, there are a couple of clubs, generally those with ideas above their station or fans who don’t quite grasp what the essential bonhomie of the amateur game is really about, who are less than universally popular, though we’re not talking Delije and Grobari levels of enmity here. In all seriousness, I reckon I’ve got proper mates, as opposed to just nodding acquaintances, from more than half the clubs in our league, such is the camaraderie and shared ethos of teams at this level, in this area.

Up here in the North East, I’d wager the overwhelming majority of football fans are Labour voters, with little if any time for the Royal Family. Check out the 250,000 in attendance at the Durham Miners’ Gala this year and the riotous acclaim for Dennis Skinner, who gained even louder cheers than Jeremy Corbyn that day. This is why I say the idea of any NUFC supporters singing God Save the Queen at the game is as likely as the Leazes End bursting into a spontaneous rendition of Mladic by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The fact is that an instinctive belief in the morality enshrined in the values of shared history, community and class struggle is integral to the working class DNA inherited by the descendants of those generations who worked in Tyneside shipyards, Durham coal mines and Teesside steel mills; we look after our own and we hate Tories.

There has never been any hint of indigenous quasi Essex man sensibilities up here, in politics or in football. Take for instance South Shields FC; in summer 2013, they were made homeless by the actions of their former chair John Rundle, who locked them out of their Filtrona Park ground, which he owned. Freshly relegated to Northern League Division 2, they were forced to play home games a 40 mile round-trip away, at Eden Lane in Peterlee in front of crowds that dwindled alarmingly to about the 50 mark. The future looked bleak until local lad made good, Geoff Thompson, a fabulously wealthy businessman who’d made his cash in the domestic energy provider market, took over. He bought Filtrona Park, renamed it Mariners’ Park, built new stands, got a new pitch laid and brought the team home for 2015/2016, when they waltzed to the Division 2 title. Last season, he appointed former North Shields boss Graham Fenton, who’d won the Vase with the Robins in 2015, as co-manager and saw success beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Sold out notices. All ticket games. 33 successive wins. Former professionals like Julio Arca, Carl Finnigan and John Shaw turning out for the Mariners. A quadruple of The Durham Challenge Cup, The Northern League Cup and Division 1 title, as well as the FA Vase, following a 4-0 demolition of Cleethorpes Town at Wembley where 13,000 Sand Dancers roared their team on to a famous, crushing victory. You simply couldn’t credit it compared to the desperate days three seasons previous. Promotion was achieved and South Shields, historically a football league side a century or more ago, will play in the Northern Premier League in 2017/2018. I’d wager they won’t stop there too long.

Now I’ll be honest and admit that South Shields have got a few fans that have got more than a little giddy with their success. They weren’t nasty or aggressive; just daft, drunken lads in replica shirts, face paint and big nylon curly wigs, carrying silly home-made flags and banners. Fair’s fair though; South Shields is split 60/40 between NUFC and Sunderland, so they’re bound to get a bit beyond themselves if their home town team starts winning stuff, bearing in mind how little success they’ve seen over the past few millennia from the supposed local powerhouses. In contrast to the tyros on the terraces, Geoff Thompson cut a sober, dignified and humble figure; whether in the corporate areas of Wembley or over half time tea and biscuits at Jarrow Roofing, he certainly didn’t act the big cheese. Fly-by-night wide boys with empty promises and emptier wallets from Spencer Trethewy to Craig Whyte have caused untold chaos at clubs the length and breadth of the country, but Geoff Thompson seems the real deal; a modest philanthropist, doing good deeds in the place he calls home.

How much different to the social life of our own dear Mike Ashley; self-professed power drinker and fireplace vomiter. We’ve been there many times before, so let’s leave the Premier League well alone and concentrate instead on another non-league owner and benefactor of a distinctly different hue to Geoff Thompson. In 2017/2018, Billericay Town will be playing at one step higher in the football pyramid then South Shields, as a member of the Isthmian Premier Division, where they’ve been since 2012. However, there’s potential for growth and expansion at The New Lodge (now renamed the AGP Arena), mainly on the back of self-made millionaire steel magnate and convicted fly tipper Glenn Tamplin’s purchase of the club. Not only did born again Christian Tamplin take a few bob out of his estimated £100m fortune to buy the Ricay, he also installed himself as team manager. How many people, I wonder, have the late, great Ron Noades as a blueprint for their sporting career? And how many of those who do can boast they own an £18m mansion in Abridge that makes Southfork look like a bedsit?

Being honest though, it appears that the partnership is working thus far. Admittedly there have been as many publicity stunts as football achievements, but if Anfield legend Paul Konchesky and the cerebral Jamie O’Hara, notwithstanding a club fine for an “altercation” with a fan after a home loss to Leatherhead, are prepared to keep their careers going and provide the club with the benefits of their experience, then who am I to complain? While O’Hara’s appearance on Celebrity Big Brother is a noted low-water mark in contemporary culture, it’s akin to a Bergman film in comparison to the hideous, toe-curling embarrassment of the footage showing the Billericay squad’s dressing room trashing of R Kelly’s The World’s Greatest. This allegedly musical attempt at team bonding, which appears to come straight from the David Brent school of motivation, accompanied by Tamplin demanding the players “shut your eyes… sing it like you mean it… go out there and do it…” is probably marginally less offensive for the casual viewer than the urological sex tape that caused R Kelly so much embarrassment a few years back. However, there may be something in this febrile R’n’B rubbish, as Billericay went out and thumped Tonbridge Angels by the unlikely margin of 8-3 to win the Isthmian League Cup straight after choir practice.

To be honest, I wonder whether Billericay Town fans are particularly bothered that Tamplin, the presumably unsackable potentate at their club, checks all the boxes that indicate the vulgarity of new money. After all, this is a town that elected the grotesque Thatcherite parvenu Theresa Gorman as their MP for 14 years, in succession to noted disciplinarian Harvey Proctor. No doubt he would have been pleased to see Tonbridge handed a damn good thrashing.

Now, in all seriousness, there is one worry for Billericay Town; while Tamplin may appear to be loving the ride at the minute and displaying a willingness to throw £10k a week at his new pet vanity project, I do wonder whether this will always be the case? The fact he bought them after his bid for Dagenham & Redbridge was turned down shows to me that it isn’t really Billericay Town that interested him, but the idea of owning a football club. Therefore, who’s to say he won’t get itchy feet or seek to trade up for a bigger model? Having a benefactor is great while the good times last, but not as much fun once the money dries up; just ask fans of Orient or Grays what that feels like. Thankfully, it’s not a question I can see having any relevance for South Shields any time soon.